With bitcoin's popularity and price surging, Coinbase's
cryptocurrency exchanged has struggled to cope with a flood of
novice traders.

The exchange has had several large-scale outages in the
last few months, including this week, after bitcoin prices surged
above $11,000 and then crashed back down around $9,000. On
Wednesday, many Coinbase users
found themselves locked out of their accounts and unable to
trade.

The company has also faced challenges from the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS), which on Wednesday
won a year-long battle over its request for transaction
information on more than 14,000 high-rolling Coinbase traders.

Hirji joins from the famed venture capital firm and
Coinbase investor Andreessen Horowitz, where he was a partner. He
also spent time in executive roles at Hewlett-Packard and the
popular online stock trading platform TD Ameritrade.

Despite the challenges, Coinbase remains one of the more popular
and mainstream exchanges for the digital currencies bitcoin,
ether, and litecoin, at a time when both consumers and
institutions like banks and governments are beginning to see
value in cryptocurrencies.

The platform simplifies a trading process that many people find
mystifying, and restricts its exchanges to established digital
currencies that have shown stability, so as to not scare off new
investors.